


my hopes are so high (that your kiss might kill me)

by mycanonnevercame



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cheek Kisses, F/M, Forehead Kisses, Is that a thing? It should be a thing, Kissing, Missing Scenes, Soft Kisses, There should always be more kissing, What do you mean this isn’t canon, blood mention, canon embellishment, five plus one fic, gunfire mention, more like...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:40:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24444469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycanonnevercame/pseuds/mycanonnevercame
Summary: Five times Frank kissed Karen and left...Plus one time Karen kissed Frank, and he stayed.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 24
Kudos: 127





	my hopes are so high (that your kiss might kill me)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional

1.

She smells good.

He knows now really isn’t the time to be noticing such things, with bullets flying through the air above them, but she’s warm underneath him and her hair is tangled around his fingers and the thought is there, unbidden but undeniable. She’s shaking and he can’t hear her shuddering breaths over the sounds of the shots ripping through bricks and glass and drywall, but he can feel her chest heaving against his.

His body isn’t much but it’s the only shield he has for her, and he presses closer to her while debris rains down on his back. He doesn’t mean to kiss her, but she has her hand wrapped around his arm in a white-knuckled grip, and he’s brushing his lips against the crown of her head without thinking it through.

He doesn’t think she notices.

“Do you believe me now?” He demands, and she nods.

“Yes,” she gasps.

He gets her out, both of them crouching low to the ground, and they come up with a plan, and he leaves her on the steps of the 15th Precinct.

2.

He pulls her out of the car.

He really shouldn’t do it — every moment he leaves Schoonover unattended is a moment where his former CO can get away, but he’s got to make sure Karen is okay. He has to know that she’s alright before he can think of anything else.

So he leaves the Blacksmith in a pile between the ruined passenger side of Karen’s car and his own torn up truck, and hurries around to the other side of her car. The door comes open without too much trouble. He has to cut away her seatbelt, and then she’s tumbling into his arms, warm and a little banged up but alive.

He props her up against the back wheel, runs his hands gently over her arms and legs, presses lightly on her ribs — as far as he can tell, nothing is broken. She’s bleeding from a scratch just under her hairline, and he has to remind himself that head wounds bleed a lot to keep from panicking at the amount of blood streaming down her face.

She groans a little and he breathes a sigh of relief. She’s going to be fine. She’ll be angry when she comes to, but she’ll live, and that’s all he cares about.

He presses a kiss to her temple, the one not covered in blood, before he can think better of it. He thinks he hears her sigh, but she doesn’t stir, so maybe he imagined it.

He drags Schoonover away before she wakes up.

3.

“He kept his family safe, Karen.”

It’s been eating him alive for days now, ever since he got David to tell him what put him in that bunker. Sarah and Leo and Zach, that beautiful family — they’re broken and sad and confused, yes, but they’re _alive_.

Karen always listens to him so intently. Like the things he says about his family are important, like they have weight. Maybe that’s why he says so much when he’s with her. Maria and Lisa and Frankie — they’re real, to her. They’re not just ghosts, not to Karen. She helps him remember, she laughs at his kids’ shenanigans and she cries with him and he likes talking about his family like they mattered. Because they did.

“I gotta find them— I gotta find the bastards that did this, that took them from me,” he says, grinding the words out, because Karen deserves to know. Karen has always been willing to look at the darkest parts of him with compassion, so maybe that’s why he finishes the thought. “I’ve got to kill them.”

She walks away from him then, and he watches in confusion, because she’s never done that before — but she wipes her tears, stops and turns back, and he knows she’s going to say something important.

“Where does that end, Frank?”

He doesn’t know what she’s asking, but she’s not really waiting for a response.

“I look at you, and all I see is this endless... echoing—“ she chokes a little, shakes her head. “Loneliness.”

The word hits like a freight train, so he denies it. “I’m not _lonely_ , Karen—“

“Bullshit,” she snaps. “We are all lonely.” He takes a step back because he’s almost forgotten what it was like, having a woman in his life who called him the fuck out when he was wrong. “I sometimes think that that is all that life is,” she continues, quieter, so he has to lean toward her to hear. “We’re all just fighting not to be alone.”

It sits between them for a long moment, heavy and true, but he can’t let it lie.

“What should I do?” He demands, almost snarling. “Should I let it go?” He spits the words out, bitter and burning, and he shakes his head, already rejecting the notion.

“No,” Karen says, and he’s taken aback all over again at how firm her voice is. “But I want there to be an after, for you.”

She’s so earnest, so intent. He can almost taste it, then, that after, brought to life between them on the power of her words alone, but she’s not finished.

She wants to help.

She wants to get involved, write an article, put herself in the crosshairs, and he can’t let her, he _can’t_.

“You don’t get to do that,” he pleads at first, then insists. “You don’t get to do that!”

She draws breath to argue, but he can’t let her, he has to make her understand.

“I can’t go after these men, and keep you safe,” he says, willing her to get it.

“You don’t have to—“

“What do you mean, I don’t have to keep you safe?” He’s shouting, and he doesn’t know how to stop, because she doesn’t get it. “My family is gone, because of what I know. _They’re gone!_ ”

Karen flinches, and he feels it like a slap, but she has to understand, she has to _know._

“I cannot let that happen to you,” he says, softer, and she doesn’t quite look up. “Hey. I cannot let that happen.”

He doesn’t know when he got so close to her, but he thinks it’s a good thing, because he’s close enough to lean in and press a kiss to her cheek. He hears her breath huff out in quiet surprise, warm against his skin, and he pulls away, stealing careful glances at her, but she doesn’t look up.

So he leaves. And he doesn’t look back.

4.

“Frank?”

He’s heading for the door, but the urgency in her voice makes him stop, makes him turn back to her.

He’d honestly only had one goal in mind when he came here, and literally everything else may have gone to shit in the meantime, but at least he’s got a living, breathing Karen to show for it. Her eyes are enormous in her pale face when he looks at her, and he doesn’t have the energy to do more than grunt an inarticulate question at her.

“What are you doing?” She asks, and he really has to think about it for a moment.

“I gotta go,” is all he says, and she looks at him like the explosion gave him two heads instead of almost taking both of theirs.

“This place is swarming with cops,” she says, and all he can do is nod. “You can’t go out there.”

He just looks at her, taking in the blood streaming from the cut on her forehead, her half-untucked shirt, the way she sways slightly on the spot but still has a solid grip on that damn handbag. His hand is still tingling from where he’d touched her, his thumb stroking against her temple as he assured himself that she was alive and this was real. That he’d saved her.

He’s not used to saving people.

“I gotta go,” he says again, but she shakes her head. Her eyes dart around the room before landing on him again.

“Take me hostage,” she says.

“What the _fuck_ , Karen.”

“Take me hostage,” she insists. “The cops won’t shoot me, and there’s no way you’re getting out of here otherwise.”

“I am not holding you hostage,” he snarls, but she shakes her head again.

“You have a way out, right?” He scowls at her. “A way out of the hotel, right?”

He nods once, because she has a way of getting the truth out of him.

“What is it?”

His eyes search the room like there’s another way out of this that doesn’t involve answering her, but in the end he has to look at her. “Zip line on the roof.”

“Elevator shaft?”

He nods.

“Okay,” she nods, approaching him, the gun she had in her purse now in her hand. She’s holding it out to him, handle first, and he stares at it like it’s a live grenade. “Frank.”

His eyes snap to hers, and she looks steady and sure, but he can’t do it, he can’t take that gun. Karen sighs and lowers it, and for half a second he thinks he’s won — but then she ejects the magazine, clears the chamber, replaces the loose bullet in the magazine.

She offers them to him, gun and magazine held on her open palms like offerings to some dark god, and he shakes his head again.

“They will not hesitate to shoot you,” Karen snaps. “Let me help.” Her voice is soft at the end, and he glances up. When did she get so close? He can’t look away.

“Let me help,” she whispers, and he finds himself nodding, eyes steady on hers.

The magazine goes into his pocket, and he takes the pistol carefully from her hand, fingers brushing. He hesitates, but she wraps one slim hand around his wrist and tows him to the door, arranges him around her, the gun tight against the soft skin of her jaw. She takes a deep breath, and he feels her chest rise against his forearm. His eyes drift closed and he takes his own steadying breath, his lungs filling with the scent of spent explosives and dust — but also Karen, sweet and fresh in spite of the circumstances.

Maybe that’s why he leans into her a little more. Maybe that’s why he turns into her, his nose nudging into her hair as his lips find the soft skin behind her ear. She shivers in his arms and he pushes them through the doors, forestalling any more conversation.

They make it to the elevator, and he reloads the gun and hands it to her, quietly amused at how easily he can give this leggy blonde reporter a loaded weapon without a second thought.

He’s about to leave when she calls him back, just his name, soft in her mouth.

He can’t speak, but he thinks she knows, anyway. Knows how important she is, what she means to him. He presses his forehead to hers, and it’s enough to breathe the same air for a moment. It’s enough that she’s alive.

“Go, go on,” she says, her voice cracking and her eyes filling with tears, and he nods.

“Take care.”

Somehow he finds the strength to leave.

5.

He drops David off, and then he goes to Karen’s.

It takes more courage than it should for him to knock on her door, but he does it. He hears footsteps on the other side of the door, followed by a pause — she’s checking the peephole, he assumes, and then the locks are turning and she’s there.

“Frank,” she breathes, and then she’s in his arms.

This time, he doesn’t hesitate to hug her back. She’s warm and alive and he breathes her in, feels her smile against his neck.

She pulls him inside and practically shoves him onto her couch, and he sits there, smiling bemusedly, while she goes to the fridge for beers.

“You better stay long enough to drink that, this time,” she says as she hands one to him, but she’s smiling and he thinks his gaze might be too warm as he looks at her but he can’t bring himself to look away.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and she rolls her eyes indulgently.

She wants to know about the carousel, and he tells her. He tells her everything, Agent Orange and Gunner and Bill and Micro, Madani and Kandahar, all of it.

“Do you want me to write about it?” She asks when he’s done, but he shakes his head.

“Everyone’s been punished,” he says softly, echoing Madani, but he isn’t prepared for the way Karen looks at him, then, like he deserves more than just punishment. Like he deserves an after.

He’s still not used to being looked at like that, and maybe that’s why he says what he says next.

“I’m leaving,” he blurts, and she blinks. “I mean...” he takes a deep breath. “I’m gonna get out of the city, for a while. Try and get my head on straight.”

She nods, searching his face, a frown creasing the space between her brows.

“Can I write to you?” He asks suddenly. Shit, he didn’t mean to say that, but Karen nods.

“I’d like that,” she says. “Don’t drop off the face of the earth, okay?”

He nods, committing her face to memory, and she hugs him again. It’s harder to let go this time.

“Take care,” he mumbles. He presses a kiss to her cheek, there in her narrow hall, lips lingering on her skin longer than they should, but she doesn’t pull away.

He pulls the door closed behind him, holding her gaze until the last possible moment, and waits to hear the locks turn before heading down the hall.

+1.

He’s gone for three months, and she misses him the whole time. She doesn’t know how it’s possible to feel so close to someone you’ve spent, objectively, so little time with, but she’s always felt like Frank knew her. Like he could somehow see all the cards she held closest to her chest.

He writes to her, sometimes just short little notes on shockingly mundane postcards, sometimes letters, a couple small packages: earrings from the Black Hills, a turquoise ring from Nevada.

She gets a map and a cork board and tracks his progress across the country, sticking little colored pins in places like Denver and Albuquerque. He doesn’t seem to be following any sort of path, and it makes her smile to imagine him out there, choosing destinations on a whim.

She writes back, notes that she keeps in a big blue bowl on her kitchen island, letters that she doesn’t mail. She doesn’t have an address to send them to, but that’s not really the point. He’ll get them when he returns. Her own small packages join the growing pile: an enamel pin shaped like a skull with pink heart eyes, a nice frame that’s the right size for the photo of his family.

It takes her a while to notice, but when his latest letter is postmarked in St. Louis, she realizes he’s coming home. She traces her finger over the map, following his path and trying to guess his next stop, trying to ignore the way her heart started pounding the moment she realized he was coming back to her.

_Coming back_ , she amends, even though the first thought felt right. It’s probably just wishful thinking. The letters and postcards keep coming: Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh. When the Hershey postcard arrives, her heart beats a little faster. She runs her fingers along the edge for a moment, staring at the flashy letters spelling out “Chocolate Town, USA,” before flipping it over.

The back just says “Home soon,” in Frank’s terrible, beautiful handwriting.

It’s late at night and she’s half-asleep on the couch, the tv on low, playing some old movie that she’s seen a million times and doesn’t really need to pay attention to, when she hears the knock on the door. She blinks out of her doze, frowning. Checks her phone. It’s only ten thirty, and she scoffs at herself. It isn’t often that she’s ready to fall asleep this early in the night.

She heaves herself off the couch with a sigh and heads for the door.

“Who’s there?” She calls, waiting just around the corner to her little entry hall. A beat, then:

“It’s me.”

“Hey, stranger,” she says, smiling as she opens the door.

He looks different. His hair is longer, his face free of bruises, but it’s more than that. There’s an ease in his stance that’s never been there before, a looseness in his shoulders as he stands there with a crooked grin on his face. She pulls him into a hug, sighs contentedly when he kisses her temple.

They settle on the couch with glasses of the good bourbon she keeps high on a shelf for special occasions. He tells her about his trip, how the sky is so big in Kansas he thought it might crush him, how he stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and felt like it could swallow him whole, how he dipped his toes into the warm blue waters of the Pacific and all he could do was yearn for the choppy grey Atlantic.

“I thought getting out of New York would be good for me,” he says around midnight. The whiskey is long gone, and Karen has her toes jammed under his thigh. He has one hand wrapped loosely around her ankle, one finger tapping intermittently against her skin. “And it was, in a way. Chicago made me miss the city, and the Mississippi is nothing like the Hudson, and no matter where I went, all I could think was how much I missed you.”

He glances at her shyly, lips curving in a nervous smile, and when she leans forward and kisses him it feels like the most natural thing in the world. He pulls her into his lap and kisses her back. When they eventually come up for air, the only thing she can say is, “Please stay.”

And he does.

She stumbles out of bed the next morning to find Frank sitting on her living room floor in nothing but his boxers. He has the big blue bowl in front of him on the coffee table, her notes and letters spread out in a chaotic semicircle around him.

He looks up, his dark eyes soft on hers, and smiles.


End file.
